What were the results of the questionnaire? - from Dirk's previous post
We did not get as many answers as we expected. In general, it seemed that people who worked longer in science coul also provide clearer and more self-conscious statements here. Also, in general, people seem to be unaware of their specific paradigms – one possible problem here could be that they were simply unaware of the term. A majority of answers indicated that the subjects felt that they had „not yet“ contributed to scientific progress as such.
We also got the impression that many people were not so much reporting their own ideas, as they were reciting what is expected of them, or what other people would say. We’re not sure here if we should have worded our questions differently (design), or whether there is this general tendency that people are afraid to face this kinds of questions/answers.




I changed the order and add some new ideas but I tried to keep all the old ones. You are welcome to edit.

1) 1) The questionnaire was answered by 9 respondents from economic, anthropology, biology, cognitive science disciplines, majority of them have been working in science for 1-4 years, two respondents worked in science for more than 10 years.

2) 2) We got the impression that people answering the question “What does scientific progress mean to you?” didn’t report their personal ideas but recited standard clichés and common opinions.

3) 3) A majority of answers indicated that the respondents felt unsecure about their personal contribution to the scientific progress.

4) 4) Most of the respondents have not yet created radically new scientific knowledge. Probably because most of them have not worked enough long in science.

5) 5) In general respondents seem to be unaware of their specific paradigms (one possible reason could be that they simply didn’t have a clear understanding of the term “paradigm”). People who admitted the existence of the paradigm did question it consciously.

6) 6) Respondents again used a lot of clichés to report their motivation to work in science. But some answers were very personal “My goal is to get into research about neurological diseases…”.

General conclusions:

We didn’t get as many answers as we expected. We have two possible explanations for that. First, we choose the wrong questions to ask, they should have been more concrete, more understandable, easy to answer. Second, probably there is general tendency that people are afraid or just simply prefer not to face the questions concerning their personal progress, their personal contribution, and their paradigms. This can be explained by the idea that it is very hard to evaluate one’s own progress.